What TV Shows Are You Watching?

Having finally read the books I feel like young Sean Bean is pretty perfectly cast as Sharpe.

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Having seen Chernobyl I need to see The Terror. Then Hornblower again.

I’m going to reiterate my desire for a Star Wars version of a Hornblower series. Or just another Hornblower series.

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Psst… hey kid. Wanna try some of… this?

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Well Rym, the movie’s flightless? It’s not going anywhere.

I was watching Years and Years on the BBC iplayer this weekend. Four episodes in out of six it’s absolutely phenomenal, a terrifying look at a near future with all the problems we face ramped up to 11. Plus it’s Russel T Davies so diverse and well written characters.

I did a quick google for posterity and found it’s premiering on HBO in the United States tonight.

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It does get a bit funky down the road with all the space mormonism, but he does basically write hornblower in space. The first book is still the best in my opinion.

I like hornblower and I like star wars, but the only hornblower-esque protagonist that makes sense is an imperial officer which just doesn’t gel with the way star wars had been widely presented for the mass audience (hand wave towards old EU paperbacks that have such a diminished impact at this point it doesn’t matter).

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Hornblower + Star Trek makes a lot more sense than Horblower + Star Wars.

Quite right, I feel like DS9 did this in a fractured way through various character’s career paths and usually 10-2 burden of command type episodes each season.

The in production animated Star Trek show might give us this feel.

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Yeah it just doesn’t work as a Hornblower analog unless you’re serving in the military of an organized bureaucratic nation-state. And the only one that works (that anyone cares about) is the Empire. I guess you could do The Old Republic or the Galactic Republic prior to the Clone Wars but then it would just be all the Hornblower stories from between the big wars where he fights pirates and stuff, which just aren’t as fun as fighting the French and Spanish.

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I think inherently you need the on again, off again nature of the Napoleonic wars replicated in the sci-fi setting to show climbing the ranks during peace and war and the various duty cruises and bureaucracy that go along with it.

The original concept behind Star Trek Discovery was supposed to be more Hornblower-ish. It was supposed to be a kind of anthology show following various crew members after leaving Star a Fleet Academy.

I think Star Trek is kinda not the setting for a Hornblower analog. Trek never emphasized the military aspect of the setting which is key to Hornblower. The Federation is emphatically about exploration and peacekeeping, its the United Nations IN SPAAAAACE!!! Hornblower is militaria with a side of politics, Trek is politics with a small side of militaria.

I have heard this and I think myself and many trek fans wouldve been into that show. Discovery just is too much like the new trek movies, all spectacle with a sy-fy made for tv movie plot.

I hear this bandied around a lot, and maybe TNG aspires to this at times, but I’d still say even half the TNG episodes are monster of the week or wider war related stories involving violence as part of the resolution to say nothing of the rest of trek featuring military situations and choices quite frequently. As much as Star Fleet is about exploration it is also tasked with all of the responsibilities of a traditional navy.

Are we having the Science Fiction Hornblower discussion for a fourth time or fifth time? I’ve lost count.

By god… is that… Horatio?

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If anything, while it’s far from a mappable analogue, The Expanse’s Holden+Rocinante plot thread is not far off from the sort of fulfillment one gets from a Hornblower type story. I mean, again, hard to draw direct parallels, but as a viewer who wants to see a guy do naval stuff good, wants to see adventures, and a captain directing the crew through all of that, it’s got a bit of each. It adds realistic-ish space physics to the mix, which is great.

And yes, a Hornblower Star Wars would essentially have to have maybe a naval officer who starts out in maybe the Republic, or at least is born then, and sees the birth of the Empire, comes to ranks through that Episode III to Solo period, and maybe slowly sees the darkness within the Empire reach its way to their corner of the Galaxy, and maybe eventually takes their ship rogue sometime around Empire Strikes Back era, eventually using it to join the Rebellion or at least forming their own miniature act of defiance. There’s easily good fun dramatic content there and I think a perspective of this captain and their crew would be a good message in today’s climate. The series could end approx around RoTJ with the fall of the Empire and the remains of the crew and captain flying off to join the new government.

Anyway Expanse Season 4, has to be coming sometime soon I feel. They are starting to promote it more heavily now than I remember in years. At least it’s real. This season is going to make or break the series, and I really hope they nail it, because season 5, if it’s covering Nemesis Games, needs to be made.

Dark Season 2! I think I should have re-watched the first season beforehand. Although, huzzah, another incest plot line. (overall good though)

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Why is this so common? -_-